Ports which operate mostly in unloading or transhipment of agricultural exporting products arriving in fluvial vessels, like the port of Rio Grande (State of Rio Grande, Brazil), are now using specific unloading places for this nature of navigation and cargo (dry bulk), equipped with shore discharging facilities and mechanized transportation of materials to store.
However, in these ports, the equipment which has shown more efficiency to solve the problem is the transhipment pontoon. It executes the transference of load from the holds of fluvial vessels straight to the ocean going ship holds.
The transhipment equipment is installed on the pontoon like a conventional ship hull.
Basically, these pontoons have different processes of cargo handling. They can be abbreviated as the three following processes or their combinations: pneumatic; mechanical-continual (bucket unloaders, chain conveyors, endless screw, belt conveyors); mechanical-intermittent (crane with grab gear).
All these unloading methods are still effected by some slowness, caused mainly by the equipment speed limitation and by the need of hatch-feeding in the existing load of the fluvial vessel.
Acceleration of the unloading speed of fluvial vessles in ports, and the performance of port facilities concerning rapidity and simplicity in loading ships, are problems that have also been worrying the inventor for quite a long time.
After elaborating many ideas and attempts in order to adapt the conventional methods and equipment to achieve that intent, the Author conceived a kind of rotating pontoon which is disclosed in this application.